I feel for you Verizon customers who have been waiting to upgrade your Blackberries - especially if you wanted a touchscreen BB. Since RIM never released the Torch 9800 for CDMA users, you guys never got to experience that goodness. Surprising since the Torch is (was now, with the release of the Torch 2 and the new 9850 for Verizon) one of the few decent releases from RIM in the past couple of years. Anywho - with the 9930 Bold, those who were left out finally have a reason to upgrade their phones.
For those of you who are wondering - this is NOT the Monaco phone that RIM plans on releasing soon. That phone is fully touchscreen - designed to replace the much hated Storm and not too much better Storm 2.
Ok, so some list of changes that RIM brought about:
- With the release of this Bold, RIM decided to nicely go back to the old style Bold 9000 keyboard. The keys are a bit bigger, so for those of you whose fingers might have been too big for the Bold 2 that was released for Verizon, I urge you to give this phone's keyboard a try - you'll be pleased. Some of you may notice the dimensions of the 9930 and the 9700 are very close, so you might wonder how they got the keyboard bigger. Well, they did it by getting rid of the plastic lining around the sides of the phone. Yes - both the keyboard and screen are now flush with the edge of the phone. I'm not sure I'm a fan of this, as it makes it a whole lot easier to crack/break something important, but it seems to be a direction most phone manufacturers are moving in, so we'll see....
- This phone is the first to have the new 7 OS - which is nice, but I think I'd rather have the QNX OS, thank you very much... Haha - but it is a good OS - for those who are interested, it takes up less space than 6. If my calculations are correct - about 15% less. This OS also supports NFC (near-field communication), so it'll be interesting to see what kind of apps developers create to take advantage of it. (For those who remember it - NFC is how Google Wallet works) Voice search also works particularly well with this OS, and two new business apps are included, called BlackBerry Protect and Balance. Protect allows your business to remotely monitor, configure and wipe, if necessary, a remote smartphone so when the phone disappears, your whole business life doesn't disappear along with it. And Balance separates business tasks from personal stuff on a BlackBerry, which helps avoid the possibility of confidential data accidentally being sent to all those shady contacts.....
- Yes, the screen is touch capable. It's actually pretty slick - especially considering how small the screen is, comparatively speaking, so it is usable in day to day operations. It especially works well with the browser - for all those times you need to move the page around, or zoom in on something, or zoom out to get a better view of the entire page. Are you going to play games with it?? Most likely not. But it is a start.
- "Liquid Graphics Technology": there's been alot of talk about this, and what exactly does RIM mean by it. Here's what I can tell you, from my research and usage of the phone: RIM basically put a separate graphics processor into the phone, which means that any of the graphics stuff should be a whole lot smoother and cleaner, since there's a distinct chip handling all of it. From what I've seen, it is pretty fluid, but it still does get hung up at times - especially when it comes to certain web pages. But overall, definitely an improvement. I heard it's also designed to support 3D animations and games...
Alright - enough of that. Time for the good stuff - is it worth it??
Short answer - absolutely.
Pros:
1) Battery life rocks. I feel for all of you iPhone and Android users whose phones die in like a day. This phone still keeps kicking after 2 days - without plugging it in once. Add to that the ability to actually change your battery, and that I tend to carry a spare just in case, and I can go practically a week without having to charge my phone. Incredible....
2) Faster processor. Thank you RIM, for finally adopting a processor that breaks the 1 GHz marker in a phone! Actually RIM upgraded a bunch of hardware - like the memory, along with the ability to do NFC communications. Thank you for reaching the 21st century RIM - we're happy to have you!
3) Global phone - this phone supports both the GSM and CDMA networks, so it can be used internationally - a big plus for our corporate employees. If you happen to travel internationally alot - don't worry, this phone's got you covered.
4) Hotspot capable - this phone I believe is the first BB to natively support hotspots. Yes, there are apps you can download for the other phones, but you usually have to pay a decent amount (the cheapest I can remember is around 35 - 40 bucks) This supports personal hotspot right out the box, and it does support N-type speeds.
Cons:
1) Apps. Actually - it's not what you think. It's not about the amount of apps - it's that quite a few don't work with OS 7 right now. Though this will be corrected as the OS matures and becomes more available.
2) Screen resolution - which still comes in at 640x480 pixels and 287 dpi. It's not bad - but I was hoping to get a qHD screen on a BB soon....
3) No 4G - this does annoy me greatly. 4G, especially on Verizon, is starting to get decent, and to not have that ability on this phone?? I get the fact that it's a battery hog, but with BB battery life's so good as it is, I can't imagine it detracting from it that much.
Honestly - what's been holding RIM back is their lack of upgrading the hardware. They always seem to be a year behind the phones of the present. They finally do some catching up with the 9930.
I'll update this review as I use the phone more - feel free to ask questions or correct me, since I'm sure I forgot something!!